Detecting launch prep might be useful but it's ultimately just too easy to conceal a launch site to be the complete solution. It doesn't really help with a sneak attack from a major power and US missile defense isn't even good enough yet to reliably stop a NK attack. What the world really needs is to ensure mutually assured destruction is remains in effect. The world cannot afford to let the Russian or Chinese dictat…
> The US nuclear triad is way out of date and potentially vulnerable to a first strike. How are nuclear submarines vulnerable to a first strike?
Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
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Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US nuclear triad is way out of date and potentially vulnerable to a first strike. How are nuclear submarines vulnerable to a first strike?
There's just a handful of Ohio class subs and all of them should have been replaced by more modern and stealthier designs by now. It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar. And even if most of the active subs survived it might not be sufficient to ensure MAD because they don't carry all that many SLBMs.
If literally one submarine survives this amazing russian counterstrike by taking out every single other ohio class at once that still leaves a counterforce of at most 12*24 = 288 warheads. that is 144 to burn russian cities and 144 to burn chinese cities. to me that seems like a credible strike.
and this is still assuming literally NO land based or air deliverable weapons are left. ... considering the spotty accuracy of russian missiles (seriously go look up their CEP ratios - do you even know what CEP stands for? ) I find that scenario very unlikely.
China is widely believed to have only 270 warheads...
https://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-u...
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#23Detecting launch prep might be useful but it's ultimately just too easy to conceal a launch site to be the complete solution. It doesn't really help with a sneak attack from a major power and US missile defense isn't even good enough yet to reliably stop a NK attack. What the world really needs is to ensure mutually assured destruction is remains in effect. The world cannot afford to let the Russian or Chinese dictat…
Frankly, I think the country that one should be the most concerned about pulling off a first strike is the USA, not China or Russia...
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly, I think the country that one should be the most concerned about pulling off a first strike is the USA, not China or Russia...
Let me guess, because of Trump, right.
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#25Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#26Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#27> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…
I think this is a pretty insightful an accurate point. I'd like to add the following: 'Secret' software is very hard to keep secret: once your enemy has a semi-intact drone/AI then they'll have upgraded their own fleet within months (if yours was indeed superior). I agree that it seems possible that a country with less wealth might outperform a country or group with more wealth. However, it's likely that the wealthie…
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's just a handful of Ohio class subs and all of them should have been replaced by more modern and stealthier designs by now. It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar. And even if most of the active subs survived it might not be sufficient to ensure MAD because they don't carry all that many SLBMs.
handful = 14 boats on deterrence patrols. there are literally 1000 warheads on active american boomers with superfusing..... If literally one submarine survives this amazing russian counterstrike by taking out every single other ohio class at once that still leaves a counterforce of at most 12*24 = 288 warheads. that is 144 to burn russian cities and 144 to burn chinese cities. to me that seems like a credible strike…
2. Why do you think superfuzes helps in a counter strike? They massively increase accuracy but that's not even the problem to solve in a MAD scenario. Superfuzes help in taking out an enemy's nuclear force while it's on the ground, as in the case of a first strike. You don't need them to hit cities.
3. Counting warheads is misleading because it ignores the possibility of interception or failure of the missiles themselves. Countering some number of those 24 missiles is entirely conceivable.
4. Yes, I know what CEP means because I too have read pages on Wikipedia. Is this your weak attempt at claiming expertise where none likely exists?
5. Here's an open letter from the actual experts that ran the US Strategic Command. They agree with me that the US nuclear triad is in dire need of modernization.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-nuclear-triad-needs-an-...
Some of their recommendations have already been implemented and a lot more needs to be done before we can rely on MAD being in effect in the future.
6. Putting the hopes of humanity on a few subs that were designed in the 1970s is a very dangerous idea. It's an admission that the triad is broken. When you've let two thirds of your redundant system fail, you've got a very urgent problem.
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#29> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…
I thought that military power depended primarily on the quantity of population and materiél. The latter is driven primarily by wealth, but also relies on building, operating and maintaining a manufacturing and industrial base.
Smarter software will help equalize and hopefully reduce coordination costs (i.e. command hierarchy & effective intelligence) but doesn't really help with population nor materiél factors.
Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
#30> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…
In an AI war, any software you push at thr beginning of the war will be useless within days, because the enemy will push better software. The most efficient way to adapt will be to continually update your algorithms by stochastic gradient descent on GPUs. In the resulting minute-by-minute arms race, hardware will be crucial, as will having clever engineers who can continually streamline the process.